Suzanne Bona

My offering of Beautiful Music to you today is FANTASTIC. The “Fantastic Style” (stylus fantasticus) was a free form musical style popularized in 17th century Italy. Violinist Ingrid Matthews and harpsichordist Byron Schenkman explored this improvisatory form on their recording,”in Stil Moderno,” including this Sonata Duodecima by Isabella Leonarda. [Technical note: you will have to […]

I love so much about this …  Jeanine De Bique uses her phenomenal voice and gorgeous sense of phrasing and line to sing a beloved aria by George Frideric Handel, Cleopatra’s aria V’adoro pupille from Handel’s “Giulio Cesare.” She also sings it a capella and with such ease, purity and elegance. Enjoy this Beautiful Music

Louis Saladin was a 17th century Provençal musician who composed music for the local Jewish community. Today’s Beautiful Music is Louis Saladin’s CANTICUM HEBRAICUM — composed in the 1670s, but only rediscovered in the 1960s by 20th century musicologist Israel Adler.    

Recently a friend — a serious amateur musician — heard the gorgeous DANCE OF THE BLESSED SPIRITS by Christoph Willibald Gluck, and swooned over its beautiful melodic line. It reminded me of other Beautiful Music by the composer, who lived from 1714-1787, bridging the end of the baroque era into the early classical era. This

September is National Piano Month, so today I’m offering some Beautiful Music by Johann Sebastian Bach played by pianist Sara Davis Buechner. These Three Minuets in G major by Bach, as arranged by Egon Petri, have such a graceful and serene quality. And in honor of National Piano Month, I hope it inspires you to

Anna Amalia, Duchess of Saxe-Weimar and Saxe-Eisenach lived from 1739-1807. She was the granddaughter of Frederick William I of Prussia and Sophia Dorothea, and the niece of Frederick the Great and Princess Anna Amalia and, like her aunt and uncle, was a huge music lover and an arts patron. She even composed some Beautiful Music;

I always love discovering musicians I didn’t know about before. Today’s Beautiful Music is by Rosanna Scalfi Marcello who lived from c. 1704 until after 1742. She was a singer in Venice, and became the student of composer (and nobleman) Benedetto Marcello. You may guess by her last name that she became more than his